I found the time to finish a second introduction to an Aristo (first one for Hexxer can be found here: https://forum.corvusbelli.com/threads/tactic-guide-hexx3r.24279/) What do you think? What are your experiences? Looking forward to a lively discussion! Maximus the Great. Symbol of PanOceania, gleaming beacon of virtue and advertisement for all PanO HI-armour producers. The man behind big plates with the serious face and even more serious haircut. He is one to hide behind (quite literally) when all seems lost. Categories for analysis Role Tank: If anyone in Aristeia exemplifies the role of tank its him. Best defence, most lives, role supporting skills. But I am getting to far ahead already. To sum it up: if you need someone to hold the ground, he is your choice. Profile Defence Let's start off with the auto-shield. Just so he gets one shield out of the box, so never forget about that. Due to that in combination with G/B dice I would consider his profile the best defensive profile but closely followed by Kozmo (G/B/Y) and Prysm (G/Y/Y) due to her switch (!!=Shield) Movement All the armour comes with a drawback. It is really hindering him to get around the board quickly. But his special skill "Implacable" in combination with his Agility (further down below) helps a lot to make him one of the most manoeuvrable Aristos especially as soon as everyone is bunched up. Brawl He likes to hold onto people with G/B. This is definitely above average and it is indeed quite hard to get away from him. (Does this actually allow to trigger the switch, as this one says "target"?) Agility You would not expect it of him, but our clumsy friend is the most agile Aristo out there with his Critical Success. He just walks away from almost everyone who has no green dice to have the chance for a possible Critical Block. Lives 7 is a lot. By far the most followed only by Aristos with 5 lives (e.g. 8-Ball or Murtair). This makes him very durable and comes in handy, as one of his abilities allows you to transfer damage from your Aristos in b2b to him instead. Skills Switch For shield and ! he can taunt the target. Nothing really cool or game changing. But ones pulled of the affected Aristo has to deal with the most tankiest tank in the game so far. Attacks His Jotum Shield attack is not very potent regarding the cost of 3 and only brings a R/B/Black dice to the table. At least the switch allows you with two ! to displace the target. In my opinion one of the weak points of Maximus. If you put him somewhere he will prevail, but he most certainly will not easily kill any enemies where he stands. At least not with support (tactics, abilities like Hanibals Pointman) or against especially squishy targets. Actions None. He is a very straight forward guy :D Automatic Skills "Get behind me" allows you to transfer damage from adjacent Aristos to Maximus. Sounds easy and allows for splitting damage up quite nicely. Was changed in a FAQ earlier this year, so you now have to choose before who takes the amount of damage before splitting it: https://aristeiathegame.com/wiki/article/86-maximus "Implacable" as soon as someone declares an attack against your other three Aristos, Maximus moves one hex. This is so easy to forget in the beginning, but this combined with his Critical Success on his agility makes him super agile in close quarters. Make you some reminder, some token or what not to think of that! Tactics Overall: Three tactics can be used by any Aristo in your team, one only by the man himself. Quite as this allows for some combinations and interactions Block: Adds two B dice to your roll. Very straight forward. As said, he is a simple guy in big armour. Allows you to cancel out quite some damage if needed or for some Aristos nice to pull of switches if a lot of shield are needed. Scram: Allows to displace all enemies adjacent to the active Aristo. So this is interesting! Think about moving Gata or Bixie into a scoring zone contested by multiple Aristos of your opponent. Or Final Boss, who is quite mobile with his Swim Move - Action. Next thing you know people are flying out of the scoring zone. Very good tactic. Freeze: Allows you to immobilize a taunted target. Okayish, as this forces you to have some effects aligned to pull it off. Depending on your team composition you can put the odds in your favour. Senor Massacre comes to mind who is quite good at taunting. But taking into account that other Aristos can dish out immobilized by just using their Actions (e.g. Valkyrie with her Frostbite for only two energy, or Hexxer with Gotcha also for only two energy). I would recommend to build on other Aristos to immobilize people and take other tactics. Adamantine: Only good for him and allows you to nullify all successes from an enemy attack or action (this for example allows to nullify Lunah's "Suppressive Fire" completely). I am a bit torn by this tactic. On one hand all damage nullified is really cool, especially as your opponent knows that he/she has to bring a lot of damage to bring down the big guy. And fwosh you just nullify all of that effort (maybe crazy moves beforehand and tactics used). On the other hand most of the time Maximus just can take the damage and you can heal him up later (looking at you Mendoza and Parvati). Synergies with other characters Favourable teammates Slightly more squishy close combat Aristos like Senor Massacre or Shona Carano can profit from the extra layer of protection you get with "Get behind me" allowing you to spread damage around. Murtair as you can take the damage from some of his self-damaging skills / tactics onto Maximus Healers which are as of right now Mendoza and Parvati as they can heal up the big guy and restore his health - much to the annoyance of your opponent obviously. Mendoza is really good at this with his switch and automatic skill Sanatur a Deo, while Parvati is better to remove annoying states from Maximus. Combos Any ideas?
Adamantine can be used to nullify all when Maximus is the Target. It can be used when he is the Target of green actions as well. Imagine how crippling Lunah's "Suppresive Fire" could be on Maximus. -2 on a guy with only 3 is not good. Well Adamantine negates her so it does not come off. Overall excellent analysis. Keep them coming please.
"Get Behind Me" changed via FAQ earlier this year, and no longer works as stated here. Right now, you have to decide how much will Max suffer before dealing it (so GATA suffering 6 can mean 5 to Max and 1 to Gata). you can review it here: https://aristeiathegame.com/wiki/article/86-maximus Apart from that, nice guide, concise and clear. :3
Adamantine can be good against Shona to counter Amputate. Maximus from full to Infirmary with just one wound is sad.
Same experience, usually I keep a "No" just to counter an enemy No. I think it's the best use of the card, if your enemy hasn't used his No already.
Thanks for pointing that out. I have not even thought about that yet. Cool! Oh, good to know! Sorry about the wrong info, will quickly edit that!
Just remind you that during a Disengage Roll, each Character is the Target from each other. So, you could use Adamantine to nullify all from your opponent's roll when trying to Disengage from Maximus (just in the strange case his is not enough).
I have a crazy idea here, but the brute has a critical star for his agility stats...that's a pretty big deal said Ron Burgundy. So, where I am going with this, get...going some where, (pun) is that our super tank here is also a top performing Scorer. Mind blown! I just went there. Yes he wont vault from end of the board to the other like Gata (seen it done before I just quit that game). But, he only ever just spends points to move onto objective. meaning, the next objective one is typically the same distance as last one minus a few bodies in the way. lol Throw in his movement switch and he becomes quite mobile. Is this heresy of the highest order or another tactical application we can add to the tactical breakdown for big blue?
I don't know about scorer, you can't rely on his trigger to move out of turn because it isn't up to you, but he's amazing in Human Target and CtF. Specially Human Target since he makes the best Transfers. In synergies with other characters it's amazing it's not mentioned his partnership with hExX3r and/or 8-Ball for mobility.
I once used Maximus' of to move him unopposed into the center scoring zone on Conquest and then used his own Tactic of "Scram" to displace all the enemy characters out of the scoring zone for a 3 point score. Even I was surprised by the result. Honestly this was the only time I have seen him score in any dramatic fashion.
Scram is awesome. It's the main reason I always picked Maximus back when I started playing. It was either that or hExX3r's Unlimited Power. Or both.
Yeah he doesn’t get the title of scorer but he really does a good job moving into and sticking to an objective and that’s all I’m looking for. :)
I've recently been testing a team built around that idea: Maximus Scorer. The team is the Taunt-Team: Maximus, Massacre, Prysm and Parvati. Last one could be exchanged to Laxmee or another Support. I chose her because of her Advanced Surgery and Field Analysis (so valuable to me for making Prysm the absolutely first Char to get activated, even own Maximus). Of course, Prysm is the key to be sure she's gonna be attacked so Maximus gets one or two extra Displacements. Massacre is there to be... well, a gadfly. He synergies very well with Prysm and Max and he may deal pritty much Damage to hunt disturbing Enemy Supports who are flying around. He can Taunts easily and close nice combos with his Tactics: Maximus. Freeze!, Adamantine. Prysm. Blinding Light, Solar Flare. Sr. Massacre. Kiss My Sexy Ass, Say It To My Face! Parvati. Advanced Surgery, Field Analysis / Reset 2.0. (if Opponent is playing a lot of States). It's difficult to play and you're likely not to win, but -man- that Round when played Kiss My Sexy Ass and then you can Freeze!, Blinding Light... is your Round.
I like the combination Max&Hexxer. Putting both of them in a zone with Max defending Hexxer while she use 5 Vade retro to displace enemy give you a lot of area denial, plus she really helps him with his low MOV in Round 1. I usually to use card like Unlimited Power,Untouchable,Scramble & block to assure survival and less wound to Max. Thanks to Max ability it's hard for the opponent to displace him away from Hexxer to deny his wound sharing ability.